Go to Weight Watchers or Become an Artist's Model?

I'll be the first to admit it. Overweight old people don't look good naked. We've got bulges and things that look better draped in tee-shirts and sweat pants. It's not just the extra pounds but at a certain age we start growing things: warts and moles and bumps of unknown origin. My husband can get away with carrying a few extra pounds. He's got the Santa Claus look---a belly that looks like a bowl full of jelly, and hair and a mustache as white as snow. Well, grayish snow that's been lying around too long without a touch up from mother nature.

Me? I sometimes wonder if I was once the Venus of Willendorf before she turned into limestone. Unfortunately, most of you will never get to Vienna to see her. But she has her counterparts in primitive art from all over the world---the fertility goddesses carved of various stones---so you can use your imagination about my figure type. Why couldn't I have been born back then when 'mature' bodies were revered and worshipped? "Hefty woman. Works hard. Lives through famines. Makes good babies." When the heck did that ideal of femininity slip out of fashion?

Fluffy women were still desirable when Botticelli was into painting nude women in 1480s. But those wide-assed ladies with flat, lifeless hair wouldn't get a second look in a pick-up bar today. And Mona of the Mona Lisa fame, she'd have to drop thirty-forty pounds if she wanted to find a husband in the year 2007. Her beautiful, creamy skin and soft eyes wouldn't cut it at a place like Mickey Gilley's without a cropped top to show off a flat belly she doesn't have. Can you image Mona line dancing! There'd be a few red necks down there in the south that would make "mooing" sounds at the poor girl. Then what would happen to her famous smile?

© Jean Froidevaux

Credit: Jean Froidevaux

Copyright: Jean Froidevaux